At present, there exist a lot of virtual social networking platforms for online virtual social activities. People often will introduce a real-life friend of theirs to a virtual social networking platform they have joined. Therefore, a lot of “circles” reflecting a relationship of people in real life exist in a virtual social networking platform. In each circle, the circle host (who has an account at the virtual social networking platform) may see a friend of his/hers. According to a number of friends shared by accounts of two circle hosts, the virtual social networking platform may recommend each one of the accounts of two circle hosts the other one.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a relationship among multiple circles on a virtual social networking platform, where a circle host A and a circle host B do not know each other (or do not know each other on the virtual social networking platform), but an account of the circle host A and an account of the circle host B share three common friends C1, C2 and C3, in which case the virtual social networking platform determines that the circle host A and the circle host B have close real-life social circles, and therefore will recommend the account of the circle host B to the account of the circle host A and recommend the account of the circle host A to the account of the circle host B. Thus, a circle host may meet, via a friend of a friend of an account of the circle host, more people close to the circle host in real life, thereby may further expand a real-life social circle of the circle host.
However, in reality a natural person may have multiple accounts on the same virtual social networking platform. For example, friends C1, C2, and C3 shared by the account of the circle host A and the account of the circle host B may be three accounts of the same natural person C on the virtual social network. The account of the circle host A and the account of the circle host B actually have only one real-life common friend (namely, natural person C), and the circle host A and the circle host B have little overlap in real life, but the virtual social networking platform mistakes that the circle host A and the circle host B have close social circles in real life, and then performs a friend recommendation failing to truthfully reflect a real-life relationship for a circle host, while leading to waste of system resources for performing friend recommendation at the same time.